The present invention relates to software supported methods, systems and tools used in the design and fabrication of custom parts, and in presenting information to customers for the customer to make selections or changes to help minimize the cost of manufacturing the customer's part.
Injection molding, among other types of molding techniques, is commonly utilized to produce plastic parts from molds. Companies and individuals engaged in fabricating molds are commonly referred to as “moldmakers.” The moldmaking art has a long history of fairly gradual innovation and advancement. Molds are designed pursuant to a specification of the part geometry provided by a customer; in many cases, functional aspects of the plastic part also need to be taken into account. Historically, moldmaking involves at least one face-to-face meeting between the moldmaker and the customer, with complex communication between the moldmaker and the customer and complex decisions made by the moldmaker regarding the construct of the mold. More recently, this process has been automated to a significant degree, to assist in transmitting information between the moldmaker and/or the moldmaker's computer system and the customer, thereby realizing significant efficiencies and corresponding price reductions in the manufacture of molds and custom molded parts. Other manufacturing processes, such as machining of a part, have also been significantly automated including transmission of information regarding the part to be manufactured. Such automation is described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,957,830, 7,840,443, 7,836,573, 7,630,783, 7,590,466, 7,496,528, 7,299,101, 7,123,986, 7,089,082, 6,836,699 and 6,701,200, all assigned to the assignee of the present invention and all incorporated by reference.
While this automation has greatly improved the process of identifying manufacturability issues, communicating those issues to the customer and quoting manufacture of the mold and/or part, problems still remain. One particular remaining problem is a difficulty of customers in quickly understanding where on a part a particular problem or needed change is located. With the face-to-face meetings between the moldmaker and the customer of the prior art, customers and moldmakers could work through the communication issues with pointing or similar gestures, on-the-fly sketches, and give-and-take dialogue characteristic of face-to-face communication. To automate the process so no moldmaker-customer face-to-face meeting is necessary, clear communication is vitally important. Sometimes the identified problem or needed manufacturability change is on a small detail of the part. Sometimes the manufacturability change is only seen on one side of the part.
The invention of U.S. Pat. No. 7,299,101 in particular, which disclosed a programmed flight pattern to show various issues to the customer, made great strides in communicating such manufacturability issues to the customer. Still, some customers are more comfortable and understand issues better when they manipulate the part rendering on the screen themselves rather than viewing the programmed flight pattern. While the programmed flight pattern may proceed too quickly for some customers, other more experienced customers may consider the programmed flight pattern tedious in proceeding through viewing all the issues on a particular part. Faster and clearer methods of communication between the part maker and the customer are needed. The need for communication clarity increases as the variety of parts manufactured through automated methods becomes more and more complex. The clearer methods of communication should permit transmission via computer and without real-time face-to-face personal interaction.